20 Responses to “I do not think that word means what Stahler thinks it means”

I am not sure what you are questioning here. Is there another meaning of playgroup with which neither Stahler nor I am familiar? (or did I completely misinterpret the word in question)

The only slight misfire I see that “playgroups” are typically kids that are only coming together for the purpose of playing, and these two kids appear to be *already* together. I can sort of forgive that because if the hostess had said, for example, “how many in your party” it derails an already weak joke.

I agree that is the joke. This one isn’t even labeled as a “CIDU” (but does have “moderately confused”.) I am trying to figure out Bill’s caption of “I do not think that word means what Stahler thinks it means”.

Playgroups are kids being brought together, generally at somebody’s house, to play. A childcare center is a group babysitting service. The two concepts rarely if ever intersect.

Making a comic connection between “How many in your group” and “how many in your playgroup” is along the lines of replacing “cliff” with “fiscal cliff” for no reason other than that they share a final syllable.

When I show up at a restaurant, the number of people with me doesn’t necessarily constitute the total number that would be dining as others might be on their way. So the mom and two kids show up first and the dad and another kid would be joining them later which makes the question about the playgroup number perfectly valid. Comic’s not that funny, btw.

I dunno. I went to one of these when I was a kid and a lot of what we did seemed like play to me. One of my earliest memories is when they brought in an NES with Super Mario Bros., which was the hot new thing at the time. Apparently Nintendo gave these things away to various daycare centers in the hopes of creating lots of video game addicts. Worked on me, at any rate…

Granted, they didn’t just let us do whatever we wanted all day, but aside from the NES and watching movies I have few memories. Other than the girls chanting “Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider / Girls go to Mars to get more candy bars”… needless to say, that was not an officially sanctioned activity.

It wasn’t uproariously funny, but I thought the overly fluffy inquiry was worth a smile, and I saw nothing incongruous (@6) about taking a group of kids from home to the local facility (perhaps to park them there while the parent goes shopping). As for the “maître(sse) d’hotel“, that is hardly “bizarre” (@4), even the local IKEA has an attendant (with a computer terminal) checking the kids in and out of the ball cage and playroom area.

James, did you catch the “The term is widely used in the United Kingdom” line in the Wikipedia article? A lot of words have different meanings here and in England. If you don’t believe me, go outside wearing your pants.

Bottom line is this: Everybody here who spent six years in a playgroup, raise your hand.

In the U.S. a playgroup is an event at which mothers get together to drink wine and tell stories about what an ordeal parenthood is. They pool their children so they don’t individually have to pay as much attention.

@ Bill (16) - I think you are hanging too hard to your interpretation of the meaning of the word. Try replacing it with “birthday party”. A traditional children’s birthday party should be held at home, with cake and ice cream and so forth. So why do so many restaurant chains (let’s not mention any McNames here) pad their profits with tacky, overpriced party offers aimed at kids? Similarly, a play group could be held anywhere, it doesn’t have to be at home.